The niche and paratextual industries of games and play

Brainstorming Game Ideas

During the class, we brainstormed ideas that we could potentially use for our final game concept. The brainstorming session in class was a great way to start thinking about the game and concepts that could be further expanded and developed. In this 5 minute brainstorm, there were a few good ideas but most of them were unusable and not something that I wanted to do. These ideas are listed below.

Choose your adventure – story mode game where the plyer makes their own story and chooses their path

Whats that – a trivia card game on quotes from TV shows, movies etc.

Studdy ladder – math type game where the players have to get the the top of thes core board to win. Would be maketed to children

Make your meme – pick a predetermined sentence to add to the meme. Kind of like cards against humanity

Make your sub – make a sandwhich based on characters and what they like and silike. Rules and restrivutions apply to make it more challenging

Pitch this – a game based of ‘Snake oil‘ where players have to promote stupid things as a solution to the players problem. Players determine whether or not the pitch was good by giving a yes or no to whether they would buy it or not.

For this game, I had wanted to create a memory analogue card game like Chin Music. Chin music is a fast game that tests your memory and ability to improvise and use your poker face throughout the game. I want to make a memory game because I enjoyed playing them as a kid and think that it would be achievable to create in the time frame that I have.

My idea is to create a game like Chin Music but with a twist by incorporating a fun theme of memes and adding the mechanics of UNO with Chin Music. My idea is to use the names of memes and co-incorporate them into the game by making them the element that people need to remember. So, like in Chin Music “What For” and “Whallop” would be changed to a meme name and creating something whacky, different and fun.

The idea of the game, which will be here on known as Meme-ery which is a game where the people playing are in competition with each other to memorise the cards that are being put down in the middle. The game depends on luck to an extent as players are dealt with random cards and have to play them during the round.

For this game, I want to combine some mechanical elements of UNO‘s action cards and also the mechanics of Chin Music to make the gameplay more competitive, interesting and fun.

I think that by making these changes the target audience for this game would expand quite a bit. People who would be interested this type of game could include people who like the original Chin Music game as this new version would make it a bit more difficult, people who like memes which could include a younger audience, people who like playing UNO and want something more challenging or different and lastly people who like memes. I believe this game would have a variety of people who would be interested in it and want to give it a go.

Time and resources will be the most challenging elements of developing and making this game or prototype.